Rapidly growing swarms of satellites around Earth are no longer just a nuisance for ground-based observatories — the reflections they cause are now intruding on space-based telescopes as well, according to new research.
Roughly 15,000 satellites currently circle the planet in vast internet-providing fleets, more than half of them belonging to SpaceX's Starlink network, which has more than 9,000 spacecraft in orbit. In 2023, astronomers reported that some of these satellites were already photobombing images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, as sunlight glinted off their surfaces leaving bright trails that erase, obscure or mimic genuine cosmic signals.
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